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Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Contempt and the universal injunction

Last month, I wrote about a case in which a district court in Texas enforced a universal injunction barring enforcement of the Obama Labor Department's overtime regulations (issued in a case against DOL) by holding in contempt private attorneys who brought a private action claiming that Chipotle violated those regs. The law firms have appealed the contempt order to the Fifth Circuit, calling it an "extraordinary and concededly unprecedented use of the contempt power to dictate the legal arguments that a stranger to that court may advance in another federal court." The firms question the conclusion that DOL can be in privity with millions of individuals merely because they would make the same legal arguments.

Tellingly, however, the plaintiffs accept the power to issue universal injunctions. Their challenge is to the logical conclusion that every universal injunction "against the federal government would apparently be binding, in personam, against each of the tens or even hundreds of millions of Americans that the relevant arm of the government purports to serve."